An Idiot's Guide to DIY Passport Photos

When we got BEB's passport photos for his visa, I realized for the first time how steep the price of passport photos are in US. In India it was a no brainer - need a passport photo, go to a studio, get one clicked and for less than a dollar you will get 4-8 nice passport size photos of yourself.
But here, $16, No Kidding!!!

So this time, when I had to get my passport pictures, we decided to try doing it ourselves. I think it would be interesting to share with you my efforts and the results. If you do it the right way, you can get your passport photo for about a dollar.

The things you'll need:

1. A digital camera in which you can turn the flash on/off.
2. A computer with Windows, you should have permissions to download and install softwares on it.
3. A pen drive to take your edited pictures for printing. Other media will also do.

For my pictures we went to my office and used the white-board there as a background for clicking the pictures. Since the room was well lit, we clicked pictures with flash switched off.
Next we came home and downloaded the pictures from camera to our laptop.
To edit the pictures we looked at paint, picasa etc. but they didn't suit our purpose. So we downloaded gimp to edit the pictures.
After downloading and installing GIMP, we opened my pictures in it and selected the one we found most suitable to turn into my passport picture. Then we looked up the required dimensions for the passport picture. In our type of visa it was 3.5 cm X 4.5cm.
Now that we had everything ready, we wanted to get the picture in precise dimensions. The trick is to shrink the picture to the required size without changing its resolution. Lesser resolution will result in grainy pictures. This was probably the most difficult part of the whole project, because we didn't know what options were available and what the final effect will be, unfamiliarity with GIMP also contributed to spending more time than what was required. But you don't need to worry because I'm documenting the precise steps to follow in GIMP, to get perfectly sized passport pictures.

Step 1: Cropping the picture to select the right area to be printed.

If the picture that you have taken has more background than a passport picture would need you will be required to crop it. Cropping the picture is also required to get it into the required ratio. 3.5 : 4.5 in this case.
From the GIMP toolbar select Rectangle selection tool. Below the toolbox, there's an option "Fixed [aspect ratio]" put 3.5:4.5 here. Now use this tool to select the portion of the picture you want to use. When you're incrementing the cursor to fit the picture portion of your choice look at the bottom of the picture window. It will show you the pixel size of the frame, in my case it is 604X777. Note it down. Use Ctrl+X to cut the required picture.

Step 2: Saving the picture in proper ratio and resolution
Use File->New to open a new image file. Before opening Gimp will ask the size of the file. Use the number you noted down earlier (808X766). Ctrl+V to paste the image you'd cut earlier in step 1.

Step 3: Scaling down the picture, while keeping the resolution intact
Use Image -> Scale Image. In the dialog box first choose the metric as milimeter and then specify the picture's true size in mm. First specify width 35, hit Return key, the height should automatically be adjusted to 45, or else you haven't done the first 2 steps properly.
Now save this picture. Check Image -> properties, its resolution should be the same as original image. Lets call this Image1.

Step 4: Making a standard print size picture(4X6 inches) with the true size image
Open File->New. In the File size dialog box, Now select the unit in inches (width =6, height = 4 ). Now Ctrl-C on the true size image that you'd saved in step 3 (Image1) and paste (Ctrl-V) it in this new file, lets call it Image2. Once you have the image in Image2, drag it to the top left corner. Now again press Ctrl-V, and you will have another Image1 on top of first one, drag it and arrange close to the first one. Repeat this until the whole image is tiled with the pictures from Image1. Save it in jpg format. Gimp will ask you the permission to export it. Say yes!

Voila! you have a 4X6inches image with 8 passport pictures on it. Copy it into the pen drive and take it to your nearest print shop. Select the picture size as 4X6 and print out 8 nice passport pictures in half a dollar.

Frugality is not about cheap, its about the choice

I like the frugal way of leading life. I like living light and having less stuff. I like the money in the bank and peace of mind that comes from being debt free. But even with all this I had a very difficult time explaining to myself why should I look after every penny I spent, why can't I buy a few things ( inexpensive) on impulse, why don't I feel right whenever I spend even a single dollar that I could have saved. Very recently I got the answer to this question through a personal experience.

Me and my husband used to go to a nearby trail everyday for biking. It was a great workout, we got to spend some quality time together and it was nice to breathe in the fresh air. It worked out really well from December to April but as summer approached our routine began to change. In summer, the sun would shine even before we could get up and get ready. Most of the days I began to avoid going out once it was even a little hot. Growing up in India and that too in relatively hotter parts of the country, I have this habit of avoiding sun as much as possible. Now the habit has become so ingrained that I can't stand even mildly hot sunshine. I experience headache, parched skin, breakouts and get really jumpy and irritated if I have to remain outside in full sun.
So during summers our workouts became smaller, because I just didn't want to remain outdoors for long. Now, that led to another problem because I was desperately trying to lose weight and reducing workouts was not really an option for me. To solve this problem I started going to the gym at my workplace. We have a nice one at my office and it is free for employees. I got a great workout and could see the impact on my weight. Still, a small issue remained. After tracking my weight for about one month, I noticed this pattern - my weight would steadily decrease during the week, but would climb back to its original place on Mondays. It was easy to see the reason for this - no workouts and an increase in the calories consumed. I realized that my weekends were undoing the whole week's workouts. Biking was not possible on weekends because we would usually get up late and by that time, sun would be shining brightly, making it difficult for me to remain outdoors for an hour or so. I had an obvious choice - taking membership of one of the gyms around here. So we tried a couple of gyms in our area and have finally settled on joining one of those. We're currently in the seven day trial period, but as soon as it ends, we are going to become paid members here. What has it got to do with frugality? Everything.

Had it not been for leading a frugal lifestyle, I wouldn't have been able to isolate needs from wants. Once I had known that I needed a gym membership for my physical well being, it didn't take me any time to make up my mind and add this expense to my monthly budget. Contrast this with the situation when I already had subscriptions of n magazines that I never bothered to even flip through, had paid for the fees of 4 classes that I had left after 2 days, had numerous unfinished craft projects stowed away here and there, I would have had a difficult time convincing myself that this gym membership is different, I really need it and will use it.

Frugality is not about sacrificing, its about choosing and prioritizing. Frugality makes you sift through unending list of expenses and come up with a few that are really important to you. I feel that it unclutters your view so that you can focus your time, resources and energy on the few things that really matter. With this thought in mind I add another twenty dollars to our monthly budget. Here's to a healthy life...!!!

Savings: How I stay motivated in face of financial mishaps

Last month while we were driving on a freeway a stray pebble hit our windshield and left a big gaping hole. It cost us 225$ in repairs.

Last month was also the month when we saved roughly 10$ by increasing the gaps between our laundry cycles and line-drying the clothes in our yard. We also saved about 10$ in movie subscriptions by borrowing dvd(s) from city library instead of paying for a streaming service.

It was easy to laugh at these savings in the face of this mishap which cost us almost equal to the yearly savings we'll get from these two changes, provided we continue to keep doing them through the year. I used to despair at these happenings and think that "There goes all my effort and time...in one single awful event..." I used to consider abandoning all these snow-flaking ideas and also abandoned many of them until I begun to put things into perspective. It finally dawned on me that snow-flaking or not, that pebble could still hit our windshield and it would still cost 225 bucks. The only difference would be that right now I have 20 bucks of snow-flakes stashed somewhere, which will soften the blow a bit for me.

Life happens, and so do things. It doesn't matter whether you've been saving or blowing money like the currency will be discontinued tomorrow. Even if your savings wont be always enough to bail you out of the situation, it will help soften the blow, at the very least you can take comfort in the fact that you did all you could to avert the situation. I think the effort and time invested in saving money is well worth it.

Celebrating 4$/Gallon gas - One less round trip a day

Crystal at Money Saving Mom, has asked readers for reasons to celebrate 4$/gallon gas price. It may sound strange, but rising fuel costs are motivating people to reconsider their choices in transportation and commute, and more and more people are modifying their lifestyle to use less of gas and more of other environment friendly options. Which IS a reason to celebrate.
So what's my change?
I work pretty close to my home (about half a mile) and my husband works within 2 miles of our home. Of late we picked up a strange habit. We started going home for tea ( or Chai as it is known in India) in the afternoons. Both of us love tea as it is prepared in India, and we usually don't like the version we can get in our offices. I don't know how we made a habit of it, but it started with me sometimes feeling sleepy during office hours and asking my husband to take me home for a tea, which he gladly obliged. It felt nice to have a 15 minutes break during the largely monotonous office hours, but the cost was much higher then we could understand initially.
A round trip home would mean a 4 mile extra trip everyday. It also stole some time from our life, because we will stay longer in the office to compensate the half hour, which we spent while going out for tea. Soon, it started showing up as the difference it made to our monthly gas expense.
So from last week I have decided to be firm and say no to this urge of going home for tea. I'm happy to report that I haven't gone home(in the afternoon) all of last week and this monday. It also helped me cut down my overall intake of tea by half. Since I was firm on saying no, my husband has also stopped going.
Yay! for myself and hubby.

Perseverence Giveth, Impulse taketh away

BEB was having laptop blues lately. His laptop charger was not working ever since we came back from India. He tried to fix the problem himself, some careful investigation told that the jack of the charger which connects it to the laptop was dead. I asked him to get a new charger for his laptop so that he can surf happily again. He replied that he wasn't willing to spend 30$ on something that was fully functional but for a 2-3 $ part. So he searched and searched for a right sized jack, on my laptop of course :( He could find some in the online stores but then he sould have to pay shipping, which he didn't want to pay. He searched in his office if he could find a jack lying around somewhere, which was not useful for the owner, no luck!! Finally he found it in the nearby Fry's store, where he had to practically convince the salespersons that they do have it in their stock...:D

So he came back with the jack and tried to connect it himself, oops...didn't work. As always he had a backup plan, he took the jack, charger and laptop to his office and requested his lab technician to solder it, which she happily did.

In the middle of the day I get a call from hubby, the laptop is back to life and the charger is good to go. His resourcefulness and perseverence paid off, even when all his friends told him that it won't work. He saved us a pretty penny ( 30$ vs. 95c ) and got the satisfaction of proving himself.

On the other hand one impulsive purchase and we were out of 30 $ of our hard earned money. Last weekend we went to Sears to snag that nice Dockers deal that everyone seems to be talking about ($75 gas card on purchase of $100). We wanted some tshirts for BEB and thought this would be a good chance to save money. It sure was a popular deal, 'coz they didn't have even a single Dockers tshirt that would fit him. While returning we just thought of taking a look at the food processors they had available in their appliance section. The 'look' ended up costing us 208$, but that wasn't the end of the story. After we bought it from Sears we found that pretty much every other store was selling it for at least 30$ less. Had we waited a bit and did our research properly, we would have saved at least 30$ on it. Because of Sears' weird price match policy we found it difficult to get price matched to other stores.

These two incidents within a week really put the results of impulsive shopping and buying after doing your homework in perspective. Perseverence giveth, Impulse taketh away.

Win win strategy

Rarely does one stumbles upon something thats good for the personal finance, earth and saves time too, I found one such thing today.

Yesterday, while hubby was ironing his shirts he complained about how wrinkled the clothes are and how difficult it was to iron them. That once again reminded me of my plan of line drying clothes instead of machine drying them. I remembered how we used to do that back in India, and the shirts were good to go with the minimum effort in ironing. I wanted to give it a spin here since we have a front yard now, but just never got around to actually doing it. I told BEB about my thoughts and he agreed that it sounded a good idea.

So today, we took all the bigger dirty clothes and washed them in the machine. Once they were done, we took them out and line dried them in our front yard. In a couple of hours all of them were dry, fresh and clean.

Since we live in an apartment where we pay per wash/ dry cycle. We saved some money( albeit small) by line drying. It was good for mother earth. Since we didn't need to wait for the dryer to finish drying, it saved us sometime too. So hubby was happy, I'm happy, our pocketbook is happy and hopefully mother earth is happy too.
Now thats what I call a win-win strategy !!!

My Frugal Ideas

1. Make our own organic fertilizer. This year, I have resolved to reduce my kitchen waste by 10%. To do that, I have started storing the tea leaves after we have made our tea. I keep them in a closed yoghurt can. I also store the pulp that is left after we make fruit juice. Once every week I empty the can in the fertilizer maker. That keeps my plants happy and kitchen produces lesser waste.
2. I use newspaper ads to line my shelves. I never buy any special paper from market.
3. My husband drops and picks me up at the office. My office is on his route so we dont have to think of another vehicle.
4. I prepare juices and smoothies at home. I dont know whether it saves me money or not, but I do know that its the purest and freshest form of juice we can have.
5. We either have our meals at home, or take lunch bags to our offices. This saves a bunch of money, and suits the health-conscious lifestyle we follow.
6. We both bike or jog on a trail around our place, instead of going to a gym.
7. We are vegetarian by religion. I never bothered to calculate, but I guess its a big moneysaver too.
8. We never use paper plates or any other disposable utensils.
9. We watch most of the movies at home, online. I paid about 20$ within the last year on online movie subscriptions. We have just gone to the theatre once, and it cost us 18$.
10. I use cloth towels in the kitchen instead of paper ones. About 7-10 of them get dirty per week. I just toss them into the laundary and they are ready to use.

I am constantly on the lookout for ideas that may save us more. And with the BIG purchase coming up next I could use every penny I can save. What are your ideas, what more do you think we can do to make that balancesheet look better. Do leave a comment for me.